Made by Google Event: Honorable mentions

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, Google just hosted a huge event in New York City celebrating their 20th year anniversary with the announcement of three major hardware releases: Google Home Hub, Pixel Slate and of course the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. In this article, however, we are going to focus on the other smaller announcements/features and if you’re interested in the major announcements, we’ve got you covered here at Suits & Tech — just click the links above.

Let’s start with the Pixel Stand, the new wireless charger directly made my Google. As the name suggests, this is a standing wireless charger, unlike many 3rd party solutions. With that being said, the standing charger fully utilizes the position its in. When placed on the charger your Pixel 3 now acts as a mini Google Home Hub. It displays the current song playing, shows you who’s knocking at your front door, even has the same slideshow functionality as the Home Hub while idle. This, of course, doesn’t replace the Home Hub but if say your Home Hub is in the kitchen or living room (where I would have it) then this is a nice feature to have in your bedroom. Now, at $79 this isn’t the cheapest wireless charging dock on the market. Google doesn’t specify if you need their dock to get these Pixel 3 features but assuming you don’t, you can get other charging docks for less.

Google also talked about how they’re taking our security more seriously. It’s no secret how Google has handled security in the past and how the public reacted but today they announced that in their latest hardware like the Pixel 3 and Pixel Slate, they are featuring a new dedicated security chip called “Titan.”

With this new chip, Google is combining a mix of AI and hardware in order to respect each user as an individual and “give them their own personal Google.” Titan security protects our data by combining data centers and on-device data by creating a “closed loop.” This chip is dedicated to securing the lock screen, better disk encryption and preserving the integrity of the OS. This is a great step in the right direction for Google.

Google also released a new Chromecast (although that was leaked a while ago). This Chromecast still features the same 1080p resolution and 5G Wi-Fi network compatibility which makes this a solid upgrade if you’re still rocking the 1st gen Chromecast.